The 2nd is the only Amendment that states its purpose: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Two hundred and more years later, we have a standing army and there is no connection between a “well regulated militia being necessary” and “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” But, as I discussed here, the downside of a standing army is greater than ever. As James Madison explained:

In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency … Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other … No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

Yet we are now in the midst of a “war on terror” that can by definition never end and, in our fear of terror, we are abandoning our freedom.

We have no Madison among this year’s Presidential candidates and never will get one if we don’t heed what he and more recently Eisenhower warned:

“Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Now, Presidential candidates and our media have, as this Gallup poll reveals, persuaded 24% of Republicans, 9% of Democrats and 15% of independents that terrorism is our most important problem.

But an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” would know car accidents kill far more of us. Twice as many Americans die every year from texting or talking on the phone while driving as died even on 9/11.

An average of just 32 Americans per year died in terrorist attacks in the next twelve years, fewer of them killed by Islamic terrorists than by disgruntled workplace and school shooters. Meanwhile, over 30,000 of us are killed by firearms every year, one thousand times as many as are killed by terrorists.

President Eisenhower spoke of the need for balance, for a sense of proportion. He would be gravely disappointed in us.

We plan to spend $70B-$90B a year, over $1,100B in total, on new weapons in the next 15 years (see Defense Modernization Plans Through the 2020s)“59% of [it on] just 10 programs–all of which are … primarily intended to support high-end conventional and nuclear conflict.”

Nuclear weapons are not usually considered appropriate against terrorists although one of our Presidential candidates did joke about nuking the Islamic State.

Spring had come at last. It wasn’t cold outside and it was good driving my convertible again, but it wasn’t really warm so after a while I turned on the heater.

A mile or two down the road I noticed wisps of steam. I drove on. The steam grew thicker. “It would be good to get an oil change, anyway,” I thought. “I’ll take it to the shop now in case this is smoke.”

The cabin was full of smoke as I turned into the lot so I shifted into neutral, turned off the ignition and cruised the rest of the way. No flames were to be seen but as I opened the door I said to the mechanic standing outside the office, “Excuse me. I think my car’s on fire.”

There never were any visible flames, perhaps because the fire truck came quickly, but sadly, the wiring harness was destroyed and the car was totaled. Thinking about it all later, I decided not to get into such a situation again, and to get out of the car and call 911 if I ever did.

President Kennedy came to a similar conclusion soon after he succeeded President Eisenhower who in his January 17, 1961 farewell address warned (see page 15 of his annotated reading copy or watch him deliver the speech), “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

In President Kennedy’s September 25, 1961 address to the UN he said: “Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness.”(See the full speech here)

Then came the October 16–28, 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. One thing had led to another until, very soon, the missiles would have been on their way. Hundred of millions would have been killed outright. Life of any kind could have become impossible.

A year earlier Kennedy had said at the UN, “a nuclear disaster, spread by wind and water and fear, could well engulf the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the committed and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an end to war–or war will put an end to mankind.”

Perhaps the prospect of nuclear disaster still seemed theoretical in 1961. It became utter conviction after October 1962. The situation in which he found himself haunted Kennedy from then on. He strove, in secret dialog with Soviet premier Khrushchev, to wind down the arms race and end the Cold War.

Those of us who lived through the 1960s have not forgotten that lesson. Well, many of us at least have not. So it is bewildering and piercingly sad that presidential candidates saying things like the following could now be applauded:

Candidate Cruz: “We will carpet bomb [ISIS] into oblivion. I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out.”

President Obama’s $583B final military budget is being sold on the premise that we are in a “new strategic era” challenged by Russia, China, North Korea, “Iran’s malign influence” and Islamic State terrorism.

We will therefore increase our military spending in Europe from $789M to $3.4B with “more rotational US forces,” “pre-positioned” weaponry and “infrastructure improvements” in response to “Russian aggression” in Ukraine and Syria, and our $71B research budget will establish “arsenal planes” to overwhelm air defenses, swarming micro-drones to be deployed from high-altitude aircraft, and much, much more. We will also spend $40B over five years to enhance our submarine fleet.

Quadrupling our forces near Russia’s borders will restart the Cold War. Western military power has not been so close to Russia since Germany’s 1941 invasion that left 10 or 20 million Russians dead. Russia must avert any risk of that happening again. What will they do? Move forces near their borders. And presumably increase spending on nuclear arms to match our plan to spend $1,000B+ on them over the next three decades.

So why are we doing all this? Because restarting the Cold War, perpetuating violence in the Middle East and fomenting it in the Far East will continue to grow the weapons market.

And why are “we the people” willing to spend so much to counter threats whose reality we do not question? Because the mainstream media swamps us in fear, politicians keep telling us to be afraid, and the economy of local communities like mine depends on military spending.

How much do we spend? Our fiscal year 2015 federal budget totaled $3.8T or $12,000 per person. Social Security and Medicare, which are funded by dedicated taxes, are each around 23% of the total. Around 29% or $1.11T is for “discretionary” programs that are authorized by Congress each year.

New military spending of $598B accounted for 54% of the discretionary 2015 programs, a further $160B of the overall budget was for veterans benefits, half or more of the $229B in payments on debt resulted from wars on Iraq and Afghanistan whose cost we borrowed, and it is estimated there is another $50B+ of covert action and surveillance spending hidden in other areas.

That’s almost $1T of military spending or $3,100+ per person every year.

I’m not saying we should eliminate military spending — we should spend less. We would spend much less if we thought realistically about the threats we’re told necessitate this year’s spending.

We’ve been led to believe something very odd. The Dalai Lama puts it well: “Since armies are legal, we feel that war is acceptable; in general, nobody feels that war is criminal … In fact, we have been brainwashed. War is … tragedy and suffering.” He continues: “although I am deeply opposed to war … it is often necessary to take a strong stand to counter unjust aggression.”

How much less would you spend on our military, and how would you use those savings to make the world happier?

Wars used to be fought for control of land, resources and people. Some went on a long time, but they all ended. Now, however, war is for the USA an industry. Its goal is not peace and stability, but ever-growing war and instability.

Media bloviating about protecting the homeland, supporting allies, and spreading democracy is a well functioning distraction. Industry leaders are expected to deliver growth, so warfare industry leaders are promoting terror.

Over the past decade the Middle East warfare market has been well penetrated to become a base for expansion throughout the area encircled by the “Functioning Core”:

The GlobalFirePower project, which tracks defense spending around the world and shows our spending ($577B) to be four times higher than our closest competitor, China, and almost ten times higher than our former arch-rival, Russia, headlines its website: “Going to war is never a decision to be taken lightly, especially when considering the overall cost of such ventures.”

So how did it happen that we no longer consider the cost of wars, and why is it that we no longer decide whether to undertake them, only where we will make wars?

As these Federal Budget charts illustrate, we categorize military spending ($598B) as “discretionary” unlike Social Security and Medicare which are funded via dedicated taxes. Discretionary means not mandatory, but no politician proposing big cuts in military spending is electable.

I’ve written before about Our Sacrosanct Jobs Program (“One man spoke of the mass unemployment of the 1930s and said that if we could attain full employment by killing Germans, we could have full employment by building houses, schools and hospitals”) and I’ve written about our arms export industrywhosecollapsing market after the Cold War was rejuvenated by President Bush’s War on Terror.

It was only in President Eisenhower’s 1961 Farewell Address, when he would never again seek election, that he warned:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Two years later, in 1963, President Kennedy tried again. Condemning the demonization of Soviet leaders, he warned against the Pax Americana we still seek to enforce today:

“What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war … I am talking about genuine peace – the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living … let us not be blind to our differences – but let us direct attention to our common interests and to means by which those differences can be resolved.”

President Kennedy was soon assassinated, his successor, President Johnson, led us into the Vietnam nightmare, in the next decades we greatly increased our military spending while fighting only small wars, and then President Bush hoodwinked us into a War on Terror that can by definition never end.

Now, when President Obama endorses spending $1,000B+ over the next three decades to enhance our ability to fight nuclear war using weapons with more flexible targeting and a range of yields even down to that of large conventional weapons, Ike is not among Obama’s potential successors.

Late last month Iraqi forces retook the provincial capital, Ramadi, from the Islamic State. That was possible primarily due to US airstrikes which, as a side-effect, destroyed over 80% of the city. Victories like that destroy peoples’ means of existence.

As I wrote herewhen I began researching the Middle East:“We have come to believe it is not only right but good to send our children to kill, and we revel in the destruction our media presents.”

Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Mali are already failing or failed states, we will drop another 23,000 bombs on them and others this year, and our drones will go on creating “collateral damage” there, in Pakistan and beyond.

Back when I was a Senior Vice President of a large global enterprise, I sometimes imagined my colleagues’ decisions that would have bad results to be stupid. They were not. I was the stupid one, not recognizing those results were desired. Now, our warfare industry leaders and I want different results.

The War on Terror will continue to grow our market. The state of our warfare industry is strong.

Most of us think beheading is barbaric and are horrified by 1,000 lashes and ten years in prison for a website advocating free speech. We abhor child marriages and are appalled that women anywhere should need permission from a male guardian even to travel.

She went on to say it would be wrong for Sweden to continue military cooperation with such a regime. European Union countries had after all in 2008 established a Common Position on arms exports making “respect for human rights in the country of final destination” a precondition.

The Saudi regime’s response was to withdrew its ambassador and stop issuing visas to Swedish businessmen. Its allies condemned Sweden’s ‘unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.’ The United Arab Emirates withdrew their ambassador, too.

How would the Swedish government respond? Sweden sold more than half a billion dollars worth of arms to Saudi Arabia from 2011 to 2014 and the Saudi regime is expected to buy 52% more arms this year than last. Would Sweden give up such a huge opportunity?

And the impact could be much broader than Sweden’s arms exporters alone. Denmark was hit with a major international boycott when a Danish newspaper published Muhammed cartoons in 2005.

Lobbying by Sweden’s business leaders began immediately. Thirty chief executives signed an open letter saying that breaking the arms trade agreement ‘would jeopardize Sweden’s reputation as a trade and co-operation partner.’

Sweden’s king called the foreign minister to his palace and told her to back off. The Constitution grants him no power, but…

And the Saudi regime positioned the minister’s denunciation of their human rights abuses as anti-Muslim hatred.

It looked like business priorities would trump human decency. But, after no doubt agonized debate, the Swedish government announced the cancellation of its military cooperation with Saudi Arabia. And a couple of weeks later Saudi Arabian media published a fabricated apology by Sweden along with the news that its ambassador would return.

This is a heartening story for anyone who thinks beheading and so forth is barbaric. But it was little reported in Europe and almost not at all here. So we must also note a couple of other things.

First, our US government supports the Saudi regime not just because we want their oil but because since we destroyed Iraq, it alone balances Iran’s power in the Middle East.

Americans fear Iran. We do not remember overthrowing Iran’s democratically elected government in 1953 and replacing it with the Shah’s dictatorship. All we remember is the theocratic regime that overthrew our friend the Shah holding our Embassy staff hostage. We imagine an Iran that we have always treated well but which is our mortal enemy for religious reasons. And our ally Israel considers Iran an existential threat because it supports its Shia fellows, Hezbollah and Hamas, working for the Palestinian State that Israel’s newly re-elected leader declared he will resist to the end.

The world’s largest importer, India, increased its purchases by 140% from 2005-2009, chiefly from Russia. The second largest, Saudi Arabia, increased its purchases by 400%, supplied chiefly by the UK (36%) and the USA (35%).We delivered $8.4 billion of arms to Saudi Arabia and their Iran-facing neighbor United Arab Emirates last year, up from $6 billion the previous year.

A growing share of big fast-growing markets is what every business leader wants.

The Swedish government decided human rights trump what arms business leaders want. My government is sticking with the opposite decision.

A news article this week brought to mind something British politician Tony Benn said, “I remember setting sail to South Africa for training [as a WW2 RAF pilot] and being part of a war aims meeting. It was the most brilliant political meeting I ever attended. One man spoke of the mass unemployment of the 1930s and said that if we could attain full employment by killing Germans, we could have full employment by building houses, schools and hospitals.”

The article is about a $643M contract with Bath Iron Works (BIW) for which Maine Senators Collins, a Republican, and King, an independent, got funding. They say it will “allow the Navy to send another DDG-51 to sea when the Navy’s fleet needs to preserve important combat capabilities in support of our national defense.” Democratic Representative Pingree said, “this is excellent news for the families who earn their living at BIW.” A shop steward who represents BIW workers said, “the contract brings more stability to the company, which employs about 5,400 people.”

So, my representatives in Washington, the BIW workers and their families, local business owners, everyone around here is happy we’re going to build more of these ships that were “originally designed to defend against Soviet aircraft, cruise missiles and nuclear attack submarines.”

What struck me is, although we don’t think of Defense that way, it has grown into an enormous jobs program. What’s more it’s a program whose rationale and scope we do not question.

President Reagan’s budget director David Stockman has points to make, however. In The Ukraine, The War Party and the Pentagon’s Swamp of Waste he writes, “the $625 billion allocated to DOD this year amounts to a colossal destruction of economic resources for no benefit whatsoever to the safety and security of the American people.”

Stockman is angry, perhaps because “About three decades ago I called the Pentagon a “swamp of waste” during an off-the-record interview that ended-up on the evening news. Presently I ended-up in President Reagan’s woodshed–explaining that, well, yes, I did say that because it was in fact true.”His article is excellent background reading.

I don’t feel emotional about this but I am equally determined to do what I can so we do question how we want to spend that $625B of tax revenue. The current program does have some benefit — it provides a lot of jobs — but as Tony Benn realized, some of them could be different jobs. Some could be jobs without the risk of being killed or maimed.

Defense spending has huge support. There was a bi-partisan agreement to cut (sequester) federal spending this year. Stockman notes that “Had every dime of the $55 billion sequester been implemented, this year’s DOD budget would have been roughly $600 billion … in 1989, the DOD budget was about $475 billion in today’s inflation-adjusted dollars.” Even though DOD spending would have been up 25% from 25 years earlier, when the time came to make the cuts, Congressman Paul Ryan and others said making them would be tantamount to surrender. So the cuts were not made.

What provoked Stockman’s article is, “Contrary to the bombast, jingoism, and shrill moralizing flowing from Washington and the mainstream media, America has no interest in the current spat between Putin and the mobs of Kiev.”

Echoing President Eisenhower’s famous warning when he left office sixty years ago, he says, “The source of the current calamity-howling about Russia is the Warfare State–that is, the existence of vast machinery of military, diplomatic and economic maneuver that is ever on the prowl for missions and mandates and that can mobilize a massive propaganda campaign on the slightest excitement.”

Stockman is outraged that we believe the propaganda and by our hypocrisy: “We have invaded every country to our South–from the Dominican Republic to Guatemala and Panama and assassinated or overthrown dozens of their leaders–all within the 60 year span since Nikita Khrushchev gifted Crimea to his minions in Kiev. So precisely which nearby borders are so sacrosanct and exactly who has done the more egregious violating?”

I’ve written before about our defense spending and military strategy over which “we the people” have no control. President Reagan greatly accelerated spending on what was in fact a spurious rationale, it dropped and stabilized in the next decade, then it was driven to extraordinary new heights by President Bush based on a new spurious rationale. The numbers below show our total defense spending, not just what is presented in the US budget defense line item but also the spending on “overseas contingency operations” i.e., the wars President Bush started in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We might be encouraged by Congress’ refusal to approve President Obama’s recent desire to take military action in Syria except that (A) Congress is currently of a mind to refuse everything he proposes and (B) everyone in Congress always wants more military spending in their district.

Important as it is to make rational changes to our defense spending and decide what kind and size jobs program we want to fund, however, we first need a government that functions, one that could debate such questions, arrive at decisions and take action.

I’m still absorbing research about how we could get such a government and, following a break where I’m hoping for sun and heat, I will report back next month.

Military Operations, Inc (MOI) — see this post — is both imaginary and real. It behaves like an entity with a purpose even though there is no entity (defined by Merriam-Webster as, “an organization that has an identity separate from those of its members”).

MOI’s components benefit from acting together. That’s all. There is not even an essence hidden by a conspiracy. MOI has no essence, is not bound together by common ownership or force, and yet it displays consistently reinforcing behavior that nourishes the life of its components just as if it did have an overall identity.

It seems that consistency of behavior could only result from an overall strategy, a comprehensive guide for action. It’s not that way. MOI strategy is not set by the top-down formal method of large corporate enterprises. There is no over-arching strategy, only complementary ones for MOI’s components. Most of those strategies are private to the individual components, especially ones that compete with each other. Some strategic material is, however, in the public domain. Here’s a link to one:

The author of this January 2010 presentation is Vice Director, Strategic Plans & Policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He introduced it as not necessarily the position of any part of the US government including its military leaders but we can assume it reflects their views as well as the President, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and executives of our major military weapons and services suppliers.

This slide illustrates where military action may be initiated. You can click it and magnify, but even the small version conveys the idea. Because the Cold War is over, there is no longer a threat from Russia, and traditional wars are unlikely to be started by Europe’s initiators of past world wars, or China, India, Australia, Canada or Brazil. That leaves only the less developed areas of the world.

Major General McDew termed the potentially formidable adversaries that are not in fact threats the “Functioning Core”. All other nations are depicted as inside a “Boundary of the Non-Integrating Gap”. That vast area includes the whole of Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, Southeast Asia including the entire Indonesian archipelago, and Northern and Western South America. “Future hot spots” are highlighted in each region.

What are the implications of this view? We may be called to action anywhere within a huge area, perhaps in several theaters simultaneously. Action may be urgent, so we need bases throughout the area. Substantial land forces may be required, especially in the Middle East. We need large air reconnaissance, attack and transport capabilities. We need a navy large enough to keep the huge oceans within the boundary safe, as a mobile base for attack wherever needed, and for large scale transport throughout the area.

Even when we are not fighting anywhere, this view implies a very large military capability of every kind deployed over a very wide area. Terrorist threats and humanitarian crises could emerge anywhere.

This is a strategic view with benefits for every component of MOI and any US President because their power is greater in time of war. Public support is more likely for an ongoing program of preparedness than for traditional wars like Vietnam a generation ago or Iraq and Afghanistan in the past decade. This is a strategy for war without end.

In a future post I will explore implications of this strategy for the future of the American people.

In The Federal Budget and GDP and The Canary and the Colly Bird I said I’d take a flashlight, calculator and canary to investigate the “Military-industrial mine-shaft that keeps us in a ruinously costly perpetual state of war”. There’s a lot of camouflage but my flashlight shed some light on the business results of what I’ll call Military Operations Inc (MOI). The canary was distressed at times but it’s OK now, maybe because I didn’t yet take it very deep.

What I mean by camouflage in this context is none of the numbers I found so far can entirely be trusted. As the Congressional GAO repeatedly says: “serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense make its financial statements unauditable.” Nonetheless, the following numbers are sufficiently OK to show relative sizes. To set them in context, DOD spending is 20% or more and DOD plus non-DOD military spending 30% or more of federal spending, i.e., around half of total estimated Federal tax revenues. Military spending grew 9% annually since 2000, much faster than GDP, and now accounts for 5%-8% of GDP.

Our stated military spending, which exceeds the next 20 nations combined, is actually a lot higher than the $711B for 2011 shown below. That number is said to include War on Terror spending but I doubt all those costs are included. Additional spending on defense-related programs, e.g., Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, and nuclear weapons maintenance brings the total above $1T and even to $1.4T with interest on debt incurred in past wars. We have military bases in at least 150 countries, almost 1.5M active military personnel, an additional 100K DOD personnel and substantially more than 100K contractor personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Spending dropped after the collapse of the Soviet Union but greatly increased following the 2001 terrorist attack that killed 3,000 US civilians. The canary was distressed to learn that the War on Terror response to that attack, recast by the Obama administration as Overseas Contingency Operation, has so far resulted in over 6,500 US military personnel killed and 50,000 wounded. The bird may not have recovered if I’d been able to find dependable counts of Iraqis, Afghanis and others killed and wounded.

Although the canary sees ratios, it is fundamentally innumerate. It recovered while I returned to my calculator. The numbers in the chart below are understated, as noted above, but they do correctly illustrate the spending pattern. A 2011 Congressional report estimates the total cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will be $1.8 trillion. An academic report the same year that includes other areas of related spending estimates $5.4 trillion.

The canary showed new signs of distress when I examined the spending rationale. When President Bush declared war on terror he said it “will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” The canary was troubled because:

Such a war can never end

The justification for the first big operation was false – satellite images said to be of Iraqi factories for enriching uranium were not

That operation was followed by ones the public barely questioned in Afghanistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Trans Saharan Africa, Pakistan and Yemen

We are repeatedly told to be prepared for future actions against North Korea and Iran

The canary recovered while I looked at more numbers. We can’t know for sure where the money goes, but the next chart gives a sense of the breakdown. Pay and housing for military personnel fluctuates fairly closely around $100B. Spending on weapons and procurement increased steeply during the Vietnam War, again toward the end of the Cold War and again from the start of the War on Terror. Spending on war operations, in other words MOI’s revenue from conducting war, which also grew during the Vietnam War and Cold War escalation, increased dramatically in the past decade.

Defense R&D spending remains relatively consistent. I’ll come back to this another day because it yields some civilian benefits, e.g., the Internet. Most of the $700B to $1T we spend on defense is simply a burden on income tax payers, a tax whose only rationale is to prevent the possible occurrence of negative things.

What, then, have I learned on Day 1 of this exploration? MOI’s Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO) product line is yielding greatly increased revenues. The obvious next question is the OCO product line’s longer term potential in the “negative things” market. How much further can OCO revenues be grown and for how long? To approach answers, I will next explore OCO product strategy in the context of MOI’s overall business strategy and organizational structure. I’ll carefully watch the canary for signs of distress.